This photo is from August, 2024
Last year, a scammer pulled off the ultimate catfishing operation by convincing a woman that they were Brad Pitt, getting her to divorce her husband, and then scamming more than $800,000 from her. All it took was some terribly Photoshopped/AI-created pictures and the promise that they could be together after he had cancer surgery. “Brad” told her that he needed the money to pay for his surgery because his own money was tied up thanks to his divorce proceedings. I felt awful for that woman, and I know that she is by no means the only person who has been scammed out of money by fraudsters or catfishers.
It looks like scammers have also been using Sandra Bullock’s name to con people out of money. Sandra, who has always been private and does not do social media, released a statement on Monday to set the record straight and warn people that scammers are pretending to be her. On Sunday, Sandy’s sister, Gesine Bullock-Prado, rang alarms that catfishers have also been impersonating her online, sharing that they’ve given thousands of dollars to her “sister.” Thankfully, the cops are looking into all of this.
In a statement to PEOPLE on Monday, Feb. 3, the Oscar winner says, “My family’s safety, as well as the innocent people being taken advantage of, is my deep concern, and there will be a time when I will comment more, but for now our focus is helping law enforcement handle this matter.”
“Please be aware that I do not participate in any form of social media. Any accounts pretending to be me or anyone associated with me are fake accounts and have been created for financial gain or to exploit people around me,” adds Bullock, 60.
The star’s statement comes after her younger sister Gesine Bullock-Prado, shared a message on Sunday, Feb. 2, in which she revealed that many people were pretending to be her on Facebook.
“I spend multiple times a day reporting fakes, dealing with weird & scary emails to my BUSINESS and HOME from men who believe that, through one of these many fake ‘me’s, they have a relationship with my sister through private messages and off app sites and have been giving (sometimes) THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS to an incredibly famous and successful grown assed woman,” wrote Gesine, 54, sharing screenshots of the faux accounts.
Gesine said the post includes only “a few FB imposter accounts, all of which I’ve reported both on this app and to a live human” at Meta, adding, “Surprise! They are all still up!”
“When I report, i also report to a security service that gives the account addresses directly to a Meta employee,” she went on, alleging that “these accounts are run by crime rings” that “also run fake groups where a fake me posts ‘official statements.’ Not me. This is my only account and y’all know it’s about baking, cooking, animals, and gardening. I’m a grown assed middle aged woman with a life and I don’t troll around at 54 DMing people.”
“If you see a fake account, are friended or messaged by one, report and block,” she advised her followers. “The only reason I stay on FB is to monitor this for my own knowledge so I am aware of the danger coming at me (and yes, because of these scams, I’ve had to involve local law enforcement and they’ve been outstanding).”
“Strangely, Insta handles these things and even informs me when someone creates an account that may be an imposter. But FB? Same company with same tech? Can’t be bothered,” Gesine concluded.
Ugh, this is all so terrible. Even if Gesine got off of Facebook, how do you even get the word out to people not to trust any of these accounts? Sandy can only reach so many people through a People statement, but if it gets picked up through different news sources, at least it’ll reach some people. I’d suggest looking for verifications, but in a world post-Elon’s Twitter takeover, in which verifications mean nothing on any platforms anymore, it’s hard. This is one of those “trust no one” situations.
It is truly scary how easy it is to spoof another person’s account. It’s not even famous people that it’s happening to, either. There was a good year-long stretch there where I was being asked to friend dummy accounts of friends and family on Facebook. Whenever I’ve gotten a seemingly random friend request, I always check to see who our mutual friends are (it almost always ends up being a high school or college acquaintance under their married name), but that was when I really started being vigilant about accepting friend and message requests from family and other people that I knew well.
Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves Reunite 30 Years After 'Speed' for Anniversary Screening in L.A. https://t.co/ZTEEMFm58T
— People (@people) October 9, 2024
photos credit: Getty, Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon and via YouTube/The Today Show
I like Gisene and Sandra so much. Gisene had a food network show, Baked in Vermont before the pandemic and for some reason my girls and I loved it and it was a comfort watch.
I’ve been shocked by all the regular people that are spoofed by these internet ppl. I have some aunts and uncles in their 70s on fb, and for some reason hackers make duplicates of them all the time. It has to have a low probability of working, right?
Gesine is wonderful – i have taken quite a few of her classes at her baking school and she is just an incredible teacher and lovely human. Her classes are hard to get into, but if you can, they’re so much fun!
Her and her family do not deserve this.
Good to see Sandy and Gesine speak out.
Sad that they have to though.
When Keanu’s band Dogstar was touring Europe last summer, there were dozens of fake Keanus on X, selling tickets and sharing watermarked pics — plus several of his mom and sisters. The drummer wrote how he had reported those accounts, the band *also* reported, and shared the official accounts, but no one cared.
Now we know why — Apartheid Clyde is busy ruining a country, and X is of no use to him any longer.
Keanu, like Sandy, is not on socials.
Shallow comment – Sandra’s hair looks great.😽😽
I saw a great story this week about an AI ‘granny’ called Daisy that has been created to waste scammers time. The creators post ‘her’ phone number somewhere it’s likely to be picked up and wait. Sure enough the scammers call and she strings them along for up to 40 minutes.
Their aim is to highlight the scammers and wasting time that could be spent scamming someone else is a happy bonus.
That’s hilarious.
even if a website looks legit after you click on the link to it from SM or an email, ALWAYS double check the URL to confirm it is the accurate URL for a company>
Meta is notorious for promoting ads for companies that are spoofing the sites of legitimate companies. This is why you will often see multiple ads with identical language sometimes from different companies and sometimes multiple ads that look legit for one company but the ad is not direct from the company (for example, over the holidays, I was inundated with ads for a sale from SparkPaws – a real dog apparel company – on IG and FB. If you clicked on the links, you were taken to a site that looked like the SparkPaws site but it really wasn’t. I only noticed at first when I tried to filter something and then looked at the URL, then started to notice a various different company names sponsoring the ads). I notified the company and was able to give them screenshots from at least 5 versions of the same ad that all directed to spoofed sites. There were other ads from companies that I wasn’t familiar with but I noticed I was getting a lot of identically worded ads from different companies (all sad to be having to put their goods on sale for a deep discount). Meta knows they’re supporting fraud but isn’t doing anything about it. With the consumer protection board being gutted by the current administration, it’s only going to get worse
I can’t believe anyone would think Sandy or her sister needed their money, but there are a lot of gullible people out there.
FB is the worst. If the celebrity doesn’t have a verified FB account, they won’t let you report the fake account – you go through the process and it asks who they are impersonating, and if there’s no verified one, it stops. I’ve tried repeatedly to report fake accounts on a few actors and athletes I see popping up. FB is useless.
FB and Instagram openly allow duplicated accounts. About every single person I know over 50 has had their accounts duplicated. Facebook allows open scams (“I need 15 drivers,” obvious cons with duplicated accounts and job offerings). In the last 3 months I have been sent (fake) friend requests from Keanu Reeves, Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds and Elon Musk (haha) on Instagram. If the tide ever turns we must eliminate fake news, eliminate bots and require some sort of user verification for every account. A lot of the hopelessness we feel when we read malicious magat trolling is coordinated with bots and doesn’t represent reality. What percentage of them are duplicated? The current system encourages fraud because more accounts/numbers means more moneh even if many aren’t “real.”